ECommerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business and needs well executed e-tailing or virtual storefronts, accessed by consumers (e.g. users, shoppers, etc.), provided by websites with online catalogs or product inventory. On-line or network access to a merchant's product inventory is typically done by consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the network (e.g. Internet) using a web browser.
An online shop can facilitate business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) online shopping, depending upon the targeted user of the online shop. Traditional retail success has relied upon physical stores providing an enjoyable user experience that promotes and facilitates the user having efficient access to products for purchase. With the growth of online shopping, comes a wealth of new market footprint coverage opportunities for stores that can appropriately cater to offshore market demands and service requirements, however users still expect the ability to efficiently find online the products they are looking for amongst all of the various types and variations of products available. Like traditional physical stores, the ability of online stores to quickly and efficiently present users with user desired product selections and descriptions greatly enhances the online store's desired goal of converting user product interest into product sales.
One critical tool used by online shoppers to find a product of interest amongst the website of the retailer directly, or by searching among alternative vendors, is a shopping search engine interface. Only once a particular product has been found and selected on the website of the seller, can the user use a shopping cart to accumulate multiple items and to adjust quantities, with an associated “checkout” process. The access to and execution of the search engine by the online shop needs to handle the effects of information load, or overload, as the product information environment presented to the user via the search engine can provide additional product information such as comparative products and services, as well as various alternatives and attributes of each alternative (e.g. variants). This product information presented to the user by the search engine must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files that are considered relevant to the user in response to their product search query, otherwise the user may quickly lose interest in the online shop and may gravitate to another online shop with a better executed product information presentation experience.
Even more than in the physical store, it's best for the merchant to consider online shopping as an opportunity for the shopper to purchase rather than an opportunity for the merchant to sell something. It's all about who is in the driving seat. It's so easy for the shopper to click away from a web page that is not of interest. The online store must make sure that it's easy for the purchaser to get the product information they're likely to want in response to their search queries, rather than purchaser deemed irrelevant, useless or wrong information. People prefer to be in control so they should feel in control as they search and navigate around the online store website via their browser experience through the search engine of the online store. Accordingly, the online shopping experience (and return online experience) of the user, as facilitated via the browser through the website search engine, should provide the user with access to product information and merchant information (e.g. shipping, store location, etc.) that is perceived by the user as ease of use and presence of user-friendly features. In today's online world, the user desires access to product information that is considered easy, provides the ability to find what the user needs quickly, and provides the user the ability to finish up fast and save time.
Further, research has shown that many consumers will not buy from websites that they do not trust. What's more, site aesthetics, i.e. how good the web store looks, ease of desired product identification, and/or ease of site navigation, can be the most important factor(s) contributing to how shoppers judge the merchant's professionalism and trustworthiness. A disadvantage with current eCommerce websites is the presentation via inefficiently configured search engine interfaces that return endlessly pages of product grids that contain product items that are mostly irrelevant to the user search. User's desire a search engine configured with a means to sort and filter category pages and search results in order to return relevant search results to a user's search/navigation query submitted to the search engine.